Description
Book SynopsisIncluded is a famous nineteenth-century debate about scientific reasoning between the hypothetico-deductivist William Whewell and the inductivist John Stuart Mill; and an account of the realism-antirealism dispute about unobservables in science, with a consideration of Perrin's argument for the existence of molecules in the early twentieth century.
Table of ContentsPart I: Descaries' Rationalism and Laws of Motion; 1. Descartes' Methodological Rules; 2. Descartes' Ontological Proof of God; 3. Descartes' Laws of Motion; 4. A Discussion of Descartes' Methodology; Part II: Newton's Inductivism and the Law of Gravity; 5. Newton's Methodological Rules; 6. Newton's "Phenomena" and Derivation of the Law of Gravity; 7. Newton on "Hypotheses," God, and Gravity; 8. Cohen's Discussion of Newton's Methodology; 9. Whewell's Critique of Newton's Methodology; Part III: Hypothetico-Deductivism, the Mill-Whewell Debate, and the Wave Theory of Light; 10. Young's Wave Theory of Light; 11. Whewell's Hypothetico-Deductivism; 12. Popper's Falsificationism; 13. Mill's Inductivism and Debate with Whewell; 14. The Mill-Whewell Debate; Part IV: Realism vs. Antirealism and Molecular Reality; 15. Duhem's Antirealism; 16. Van Fraassen's Antirealism; 17. Perrin's Realism and Argument for Molecules; 18. Salmon's Empirical Defense of Realism; 19. Realism and Perrin's Argument for Molecules; Part V: Galileo's Tower Argument and Rejections of Universal Rules of Method; 20. Galileo's Refutation of the Tower Argument; 21. Feyerabend's Rejection of Universal Rules; 22. A Critique of Feyerabend's Anarchism; 23. Kuhn's Rejection of Universal Rules; 24. A Discussion of Kuhn's "Values"
